Android@Home seeks to rival Apple's Airplay

From http://www.androidapps.com/tech/articles/11026-android-home-could-rival-apple-airplay

"One area in which Google has yet to catch up with Apple is home entertainment. That may soon change, as Google is reportedly working on an Android-based home music system called Android@home. Such a system would likely be among the first products to come out of Project Tungsten, which Google demonstrated at their I/O conference last spring. There, Google showed a tablet that could manage various aspects of the home, including turning lights on and off, sending music from the Internet to a hi-fi, and speakers laced with an NFC chip to initiate music play."

EDvent Calendar: Day 16 (QR codes)

Some fun things to do with QR Codes:
1. Help students find software:

2. Have a treasure hunt:

3. Learn about the periodic table:

That is all.

EDvent Calendar: Day 14 (Augmented reality)

For those who don't know about it, augmented reality is the name given to any technology that can overlay the real world with information or data. There is huge potential for learning in Augmented Reality; if you've got a smartphone, download one of these apps and have a play. If you'd like to learn more about how students can use AR as a publication tool, go here. At the frivolous end, we can turn roadsigns into monsters:


...while at the more serious end, AR can be used to see what the world used to be like...


...before the Christchurch earthquake (CityViewAR by Hitlab):

...to bring textbooks to life (Aurasma):


...or make meaning out of the world around you (Wikitude):

Three cool features of the latest Android phone

Here's a nice video about NFC (near field communication). The latest Android phones, equipped with NFC, allow people to pay for purchases using credit card details loaded onto their phone. As the video shows, you can tap the point of sale terminal with your phone and have small purchases deducted from your account. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/more-google-wallet-merchants-are-live.html

The second cool thing about NFC is its ability to share content using 'Android Beam'. It works a bit like bluetooth, and allows users near each other to share just about anything: videos, website links, contact details, images etc. Just tap and go.

The other cool thing about the latest Google phone? You can unlock it by smiling at it. :-)

Layar AR gets a re-vamp

Layar has provided users with a very usable augmented reality platform, but its recent re-vamp offers some really nice new features. One of the most interesting is the ability to use AR to share real-world content like magazine articles with Twitter or Facebook followers. Another (less earnest but still just as much fun) application is to interact with things like cafe menus and wine lists. The only difficult part of using it seems to be choosing between the strawberry and lemon margarita during happy hour.

Zappar: augmented reality app

Here are two examples of the augmented reality app 'Zappar': one where a 2D poster for a film turns into a 3D animated advertisement for a film:

...and another one that could get a bit out of control (if you're prone to hearing voices)...

Zappar Sign Monsters from Fraser Davidson on Vimeo.

Maharadroid

Thanks to Alan McNatty and the great people of Catalyst IT, Myportfolio.school.nz and Mahara users worldwide have the ability to upload images directly to their e-portfolio. Imagine the scenario of a student out in the world seeing and recognising an example of right angle geometry. They whip out their phone, take a photo of it, then upload it to their e-portfolio directly from the phone gallery. It's a great step forward in capturing evidence of learning out in the landscape rather than just in the classroom. Here it is in action:

Four cool tools for studying astronomy

Two of my favourite applications when it comes to studying the stars are Celestia and Stellarium. The former allows one to fly through the solar system following planets, asteroids or satellites, while the latter allows one to place oneself anywhere in the world to watch the constellations travel across the sky above. Stellarium also allows one to pause, fast-forward or rewind time to see what the starts do. There are some very cool videos on youtube that showcase what these two programmes can do:

• Stellarium
• Celestia

There is also an increasing number of applications for Android that help people learn more about the night sky while standing in their front yard as well. Google Sky Map is great. If you want to find where Mars is, type in Mars and it will point an arrow in the right direction until you find it (video). Satellite AR is something I've only just discovered but it is no less impressive. It uses augmented reality to overlay the night sky with images and trajectories of satellites passing overhead. Here's a demo of it in action:

Wikitude AR

Okay, so here's something I've been playing with for a while: Wikitude AR. I first discovered it 18 months ago and have been working on integrating it with what we do at Albany Senior High School. It's augmented reality, which revolves around placing information into the landscape. The content is accessible with the use of a smartphone and mashes up GPS, 3G or wifi and a phone's compass. My history class had some fun placing information about the 1951 Waterfront Strike around the waterfront in Auckland. If you're interested in learning more, you can go there, and with the help of Wikitude AR learn as much as you like. Because the content is wiki-based and placed into the landscape, the only limit is a teacher's (or a class's) imagination. Here's a video of Wikitude AR being used around the Waitemata Harbour:
P.S. the bird you can hear calling in the video is the pukeko; a tenacious Aotearoa wading bird.